The Relationship Between Humor and Physical Therapist Studentsʼ Anxiety

Background and Purpose. Anxiety, a commonly reported symptom of stress in college students, may be disabling if it persists. Since some studies have demonstrated the influence of humor in reducing levels of anxiety, one purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between sense of humor and trait anxiety in physical therapist students. The second purpose was to compare the effect of viewing a humorous videotape and the effect of doing homework on state anxiety in physical therapist students. Subjects. The subjects were 54 students in a physical therapist professional education program. Methods. During the beginning of the first of 2 sessions the students completed the trait anxiety part of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI). During the end of the second session they completed the Multidimensional Sense of Humor Scale (MSHS). The treatments consisted of doing homework for 15 minutes during the first session and viewing a humorous videotape for 15 minutes during the second session. Before and after each treatment, students completed the state anxiety part of the STAI. The Spearman rank correlation coefficient and Wilcoxon signed rank test were used to analyze the data. Results. There was a significant negative correlation (Pearson r = -0.32) between the MSHS scores and the trait anxiety scores of the STAI. Posttest state anxiety was significantly lower for the humor treatment than for the homework treatment. There was a significant increase in state anxiety after doing homework, and there was a significant decrease in state anxiety after viewing the humorous videotape. Discussion and Conclusion. There was a fair inverse relationship between sense of humor and trait anxiety, providing some evidence that the higher the sense of humor the lower the trait anxiety. Results supported the use of humorous videotapes in decreasing state anxiety of college students. Because persistent anxiety may become disabling to physical therapist students, viewing humorous material may be one way of helping to decrease this anxiety.